Lincoln’s Sparrow

The Lincoln’s Sparrow (Melospiza lincolnii) is one of the most elusive North American birds because of its solitary and highly secretive behavior. It is a less common Passerine bird that regularly remains covered up under thick ground cover, yet can be recognized by its sweet, Wrenlike melody. Lincoln’s Sparrow is one of three species in the genus Melospiza which also includes the Song Sparrow (M. melodia) and the Swamp Sparrow (M. georgiana).

About Lincoln’s Sparrows

This bird has a secretive nature and breeding habits solely in boreal regions. The Lincoln’s Sparrow was named by John James Audubon after his friend Thomas Lincoln of Dennysville, Maine. Lincoln shot the bird on an expedition with Audubon to Nova Scotia in 1834, and Audubon named it in honor of his travel companion. They are fairly small Sparrows only about 5 ¾ inches in length. Lincoln’s Sparrows are warm, colorful Sparrows similar to Song Sparrows, but smaller and marked distinctly that looks like a Song Sparrow that got a makeover.

Bringing to light the remarkable actions of birds through examples from species around the world, the more you learn about birds, their needs, and the challenges and even crises many species face, the more concerned and involved you’re likely to become in supporting wildlife habitat conservation and restoration efforts. This article will teach you a variety of things about Lincoln’s Sparrows. Today you will learn:

● Lincoln’s Sparrow Photos, Color Pattern, Song
● Lincoln’s Sparrow Size, Eating behavior, Habitat
● Lincoln’s Sparrow Range and Migration, Nesting

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Lincoln’s Sparrow Color Pattern

Lincoln’s Sparrows are streaky brown, buffy, and gray overall with rusty edges to their wings and tails. Their chests and sides are rich buffs with fine black streaking that fades into white bellies. Their faces have a buffy mustache stripe that has a border of thin brown lines. A buffy eyering, a thick gray eyebrow, and a dark eyeline mark the area around the eye. Their crowns have brown and black stripes with a gray central crown stripe.

Description and Identification

Lincoln’s Sparrows are earthy colored, buffy, and dim by and large with corroded edges to their wings and tails. Their chests and sides are rich buffs with fine dark markings that blur into white paunches. Adults have dim streaked olive-earthy colored upperparts and a light earthy colored bosom with fine streaks, white tummies, and whitethroats. They have earthy colored caps with dark stripes in the center, olive-earthy colored wings, and limited tails. Their faces are dim with earthy colored cheeks, a buffy mustache, and an earthy colored line through their eyes with tight eye-rings. Males and females are indistinguishable in plumage. They are fairly comparable in appearance to the Tune Sparrow, albeit more modest and trimmer with better bosom streaks.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Song

Lincoln’s Sparrow is one of the most musical Sparrows their songs are a bright, clear jumble of phrases, rising in volume, pitch, and intensity in the middle. Their song is sounds like the song of a Purple Finch or House Wren. Only males sing a rich Wren-like gurgling song of trills, gurgles, and buzzes from exposed perches or tucked inside a shrub. Each song starts off with 2 or 3 bell-like notes before bursting into bubbly trills and gurgles that rapidly change pitch. Their song is unique among the Melospiza genus.

This bird has two call sounds: one is an aggressive, flat tup or chip with varied frequencies, several rapid high-pitched, insect-like “zeets”. The other is softer. Both these calls are for defending their nest.

They tend to sing in pines along the edges of meadows or in low willow thickets, so walk along edges listening for their bubbly song. They don’t tend to move much while they are singing, so you’ll have time to search for any that you hear. During mating season their call sequences sound distinctly hoarse.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Size

This species grows up to 5-6 inches in length and gains a wingspan around 7-8 inches. The average weight of a fully grown adult Lincoln’s Sparrow is anywhere between 17-19 grams. With this size, the dainty Lincoln’s Sparrow has a talent for concealing itself.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Behavior

Lincoln’s Sparrows are secretive little birds that forage on or near the ground, rarely straying far from dense cover. During the breeding season, males sing either from exposed perches or tucked inside a shrub or low in vegetation. They often scratch the ground, looking for insects or other food items. They typically prefer staying near cover, foraging on the ground but scurrying back to cover if they sense a threat.

Lincoln’s Sparrows spend a lot of time sneaking around on the ground in search of insects or small seeds, never straying far from cover. They also perch in low trees and shrubs to forage or to announce their presence. When they fly between trees and shrubs they make direct flights, often holding their tails up before landing.

Males defend their territories with songs and will threaten intruders with buzzing calls and wing-flapping. When the female is ready to mate, she approaches the male and flutters her wings the way a juvenile bird begs for food. They form monogamous pair bonds during the breeding season, but they do not maintain those bonds the rest of the year. Once on the nest, the female is especially secretive. When disturbed, she slips quietly off the nest and runs mouselike with head down through the vegetation for several feet before flying up off the ground.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Diet

Seeds make up a large portion of their diet, particularly in migration and during the winter months. They will also feed on insects and spiders, particularly during the summer breeding season when young need animal protein. In the winter, the majority of their diet consists of small seeds of weeds and grasses, but when available they will also eat terrestrial vertebrates.

During the breeding season, they mainly feed on arthropods including insect larvae, ants, spiders, beetles, flies, moths, caterpillars, mayflies, and others. Adults typically eat prey from higher trophic levels such as spiders, whereas they feed their chicks greater proportions of plant material and lower trophic level prey like grasshoppers. They mostly forage on the ground in dense vegetation and, in the winter, may occasionally use bird feeders. They catch their prey with their bill while hopping on the ground and typically swallow their prey whole. In the winter they also eat small seeds from ground feeders. They scratch the ground under thickets to uncover insects and seeds or will pick food off low shrubs.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Habitat

Lincoln’s Sparrows usually live in isolation. They live in a wide variety of habitats as they move through the state, but the common element that generally must be present is some form of a cover mostly in well-covered brushy habitats, often near water. This can be a riparian thicket, shrubby wetlands, fencerows and shelterbelts, and other areas with low shrubs and cover. During the summer they are often live in riparian areas, boggy areas with shrubs, or patchy woodlands with cover and more open areas during the breeding season.

Range and Migration

During migration and winter, they are not as obvious but a little bit of gentle push in Sparrow-laden fields and shrubby areas might encourage one to peek out of a shrub, giving you just enough time to grab your binoculars for a look. During migration Lincoln’s Sparrows often associate with other Sparrows, including White-crowned Sparrows, Song
Sparrows, and Swamp Sparrows. In the winter they are usually solitary, but sometimes forage with small groups of other Sparrows.

These breeds are mostly seen in Alaska, northern Quebec, Labrador, and Newfoundland south to California, northern New Mexico, and northern New England. In winters, one can locate them across the southern tier of the United States. An important issue concerning connectivity of Lincoln’s Sparrow habitat could be the connectivity of summer ranges to winter ranges. Although Lincoln’s Sparrows are not neotropical migrants, they migrate long distances through arid habitats in the western United States and would be expected to use habitats similar to those used by neotropical migrants because those areas supply suitable species-specific resources that may be lacking in the surrounding landscape.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Lifecycle

The female lays 3-6 eggs, and she alone incubates the eggs. The eggs are pale green to greenish-white and are heavily spotted with reddish-brown. Females may remain in nests until approached very closely, then scurry away over the ground like rodents. The eggs hatch after about 12 days, with the young leaving the nest about 10-14 days after hatching, but they may even be tended by the parents for another 2-3 weeks or more. Once these young birds leave the nest they go on to live long lives, living to be at least 7 years old.

The male Lincoln’s Sparrows bill shape is correlated with the quality of their songs, with declining quality as the ratio of bill height to bill width decreases. This impacts the reproductive success because song quality influences female mating preferences. Males that hatch later in the breeding season tend to have bill shapes that are less suitable for
producing songs that attract females, and thus, have lower reproductive success.

Nesting

On their breeding grounds, their nests are cups built of grasses, strips of bark, and roots, lined with finer material such as grasses, downy plant material, and mosses. The nest is usually placed on the ground or very close to the ground, in a protected area such as in a shrub, the base of a shrub, next to a tussock of grass, or other similar areas. Lincoln’s Sparrows are ground nesters. The female builds a nest on the ground or just above the ground inside a willow or birch
shrub that is surrounded by a thick cover of sedges and flowering plants such as corn lily and buttercup. Before the female starts building a nest she often digs out a small depression in the ground in which to place the nest. Over the next 2–3 days she weaves together willow bark and dried sedges and grasses to form a cup-shaped nest. When she
completes the base, she lines the inside of the nest with soft plant material. The completed nest is about 4 inches in diameter and 2 inches tall.

Anatomy of a Lincoln’s Sparrow

Lincoln’s Sparrows are generally secretive, streaky brown, buffy, and gray overall with rusty edges to its wings and tail. Its chest and sides are bright and buffed with fine black streaking that fades into a white belly. Their faces are grey with brown cheeks. They have a buffy mustache stripe that is bordered by thick lines, and a brown line through the eye with a narrow eye-ring. Male and female feathers are very similar and some of them rarely have a unicoloured crown like the Swamp Sparrow. They are fairly comparable in appearance to the Song Sparrow but are a bit smaller and trimmer with finer breast streaks ( but they are not impossible to see).

Final Thoughts

Birds are the messengers that tell us about the health of the planet. Birds are widespread and respond quickly to changes in the environment. Because of this, they are our early-warning system for pressing concerns such as climate change. It is basic to know a bird and its practices to help recognize it while bird-watching. Spotting Lincoln Sparrows is a dream for bird-watchers. The petite Lincoln’s Sparrow has an ability for hiding itself. It sneaks around the ground in the midst of willow shrubberies in wet knolls, seldom wandering from cover. At the point when it chooses to spring up and sing from a willow twig, its sweet, confusing tune is more fitting of a House Wren than a Sparrow.

Though listed as “Least Concern” in the IUCN, Lincoln’s Sparrows appear to be vulnerable to livestock grazing or human disturbance in their wetland breeding habitat. Like virtually all migrant songbirds, Lincoln’s Sparrows are vulnerable to collisions with structures such as TV towers and buildings. This is why it is important to take note of how we can help protect this species, so that bird watchers for generations to come can see these magnificent birds!

Ornithology

Bird Watching Academy & Camp Subscription Boxes

At the Bird Watching Academy & Camp we help kids, youth, and adults get excited and involved in bird watching. We have several monthly subscription boxes that you can subscribe to. Our monthly subscription boxes help kids, youth, and adults learn about birds, bird watching, and bird conservation.

Bird Watching Binoculars for Identifying Lincoln’s Sparrows

The most common types of bird watching binoculars for viewing Lincoln’s Sparrows are 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. Bird Watching Academy & Camp sells really nice 8×21 binoculars and 10×42 binoculars. You can view and purchase them here.

Lincoln’s Sparrow Stickers

Stickers are a great way for you to display your love for bird watching and the Lincoln’s Sparrow. We sell a monthly subscription sticker pack. The sticker packs have 12 bird stickers. These sticker packs will help your kids learn new birds every month.

Bird Feeders For Lincoln’s Sparrows

There are many types of bird feeders. Bird feeders are a great addition to your backyard. Bird feeders will increase the chances of attracting birds drastically. Both kids and adults will have a great time watching birds eat at these bird feeders. There are a wide variety of bird feeders on the market and it is important to find the best fit for you and your backyard.

Bird Houses For Lincoln’s Sparrows

There are many types of bird houses. Building a bird house is always fun but can be frustrating. Getting a bird house for kids to watch birds grow is always fun. If you spend a little extra money on bird houses, it will be well worth every penny and they’ll look great.